Jason Wiener | p.c. is proud to announce that we have been named “Best For The World” by B Lab for the second year in a row. This year’s award focuses on governance within the legal industry.

We have been a certified B Corp for three years and a Public Benefit Corporation for nearly four years. Jason Wiener, Principal at Jason Wiener | p.c., had this to say: “We are honored to join such impressive company with others recognized as best for the world. This is a very meaningful distinction. We will continue to strive to advance the notion that business can be a force for good.”

We are intentional about working with and advising companies that are progressive in their approach to business. Whether it be a company committed to having a net positive environmental impact or a small business that wants to implement democratic ownership principles, we are helping our clients innovate their business structures and governance practices to achieve better outcomes for employees and communities.

As a firm, we re-visit our values and mission statement weekly to discuss how we are living out our values and where challenges arise. This results in an open dialogue among everyone at the firm about how we can better serve our clients and what impacts our actions are having on our community at large. Our most recent community initiative, the Legal Café, came out of this open dialogue. The Legal Café is a free event, inspired by the Sustainable Economies Law Center, where we invite community members to join us for a short presentation on a legal issue and an hour-long small group Q&A with our attorneys.

Perhaps the most important part of being a social enterprise is continual evaluation of current practices with a critical eye to where we can improve. Through retreats, retrospectives, and weekly team huddles, we evaluate our impact internally and externally—constantly looking for ways to improve. As a result, our firm takes an iterative approach to client work; we are not hesitant to try new things. This approach keeps us engaged, flexes our creativity, and ensures that we are delivering innovative solutions for our clients and community.

As we grow, we are excited to also grow our community focused offerings. One long-term goal we have identified is to increase the amount of pro bono work we do individually and as a firm. To do this, we plan to continue hosting our Legal Cafés, explore pro bono partnerships, offer one-on-one consultations to low-income entrepreneurs, and increase our use of technology in a thoughtful way that will allow us to serve a more diverse set of clients.

We are excited and honored to receive recognition for our work as a B Corp. To anyone new to this space, there are a variety of practices that have led us to where we are. Don’t be afraid to experiment and actively engage your employees, vendors, and customers in the discussion about ways to improve. Give out much responsibility, trust people—then listen to and implement the feedback. Together, you will have more impact than you could individually.

Cooperatives are the original social enterprise business model and Colorado is emerging as the “Delaware of cooperative law,” thanks in no small part to limited cooperative associations (LCAs), authorized by C.R.S. Title 7, Article 58. The limited cooperative association is a relatively new entity type, adopted in Colorado in 2010. It offers a balance of flexibility, self-determination, cooperative identity and fundamental protection for the cooperative principles and economic structure. As of 2017, LCAs can also elect the protections and privileges of the Colorado Public Benefit Corporation Act.

Longer-term horizon and non-liquidity based options available for equity redemption and planning purposes

Investments and ROI

Like traditional corporations, public benefit corporations, or LLC’s, LCA’s can generate returns for investors. LCA’s operate with pluralistic purpose, for the benefit of members, to generate a profit, and to tend to the interests of other stakeholders, including investors. LCA’s distribute profit to their members on the basis of “patronage”; the value of goods or services contributed to or purchased from the LCA, and to investors based on the relative amount invested. Subject to certain limitations, LCA’s can generate returns for investors based on profitability, distributions on profitable asset sales, refinancing, or through a liquidity event. LCA’s, as member-owned and democratically-governed entities, seek to grow and operate sustainably for the benefit of their members, and thus do not set out with the objective of demutualizing or undergoing a liquidity event. Consequently, the primary mechanism for generating a return on investment is through sustainable operations and profitability.

More recently, multi-stakeholder start-up LCA’s have been using revenue-based financing mechanisms to raise capital, offering investors a return of up to a multiple of 1-5x the original investment, or a fixed percentage of profit for a fixed duration of time. Once the cap is reached, the shares are treated as automatically repurchased. These instruments are sometimes called demand dividends. Even Silicon Valley and New York VC’s are catching on to revenue-based financing and alternative business models as a way of helping to build a more sustainable and healthy business.

Non-exhaustive list of examples of seed-stage investment terms based on recent offerings.

Equity equivalent investment type:

“Capped Return, Self-Redeeming”

“Profit Share, Self-Redeeming”

“Hybrid Profit Share – Capped Return”

“Target Dividend”

Original investment (e.g.)

$500,000

$500,000

$500,000

$500,000

Return

3x cap, no pre-set profit allocation

X% of profit for 5-years.

Greater of Cap or X% of profits for 5-years, with true-up within 90-days of 5-year anniversary

Target 5-8% annual dividend (non-cumulative)

Liquidity

Priority distribution of Cap, less prior distributions before any distributions to members

All certified Colorado B-Corps, organized as Colorado Corporations or Cooperatives, are required to become Public Benefit Corporations (PBCs) by April 1, 2018. Since a number of our clients are B-Corps, we’ve been immersing ourselves in the finer points of the Colorado Public Benefit Corporation Act (PBCA), particularly as applied to Limited Cooperative Associations (LCAs). As originally enacted, the PBCA did not allow LCAs to elect PBC status despite Article 55 and Article 56 cooperatives being able to do so. It appears that the omission was simply an oversight by the drafters that was recently corrected in an amendment that allows LCAs to elect PBC status. While this was a needed amendment to the PBCA, the PBCA is not as cleanly applied to LCAs as to Article 55 and Article 56 cooperatives. Unlike Article 55 and 56 cooperatives, the Colorado Business Corporation Act (CBCA) is not used as a gap filler for the Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act (ULCAA), which governs LCAs. This presents a challenge to limiting director liability for LCAs under the PBCA. The PBCA is written with the corporate form in mind and references the CBCA with regards to director liability, but is silent as to how use of the PBC form will affect director liability when the entity is an LCA.

Section 7-101-506 of the PBCA lays out the duties of the directors of a PBC:

(1) The board of directors shall manage or direct the business and affairs of a public benefit corporation in a manner that balances the pecuniary interests of the shareholders, the best interests of those materially affected by the corporation’s conduct, and the specific public benefit identified in its articles of incorporation.

(2) A director of a public benefit corporation:

(a) Does not, by virtue of the public benefit provisions of section 7-101-503 (1), have a duty to any person on account of an interest of the person in the public benefit identified in the articles of incorporation or on account of an interest materially affected by the corporation’s conduct; and

Additionally, it permits a PBC to expressly state in its articles of incorporation that a “disinterested director’s failure to satisfy this section does not, for the purposes of section 7-108-401 or 7-108-402 or article 109 of this title 7, constitute an act or omission not in good faith or breach of the duty of loyalty.” The problem for LCAs is that this provision only contemplates a corporation using the PBC form as evidenced by its reference to “articles of incorporation” and the statutory references to the CBCA. The concern for an LCA organized using the PBC form is that its directors may not be protected by the limiting language as it is currently written in the statute. Further, simply altering the express language provided in the PBCA to reference the analogous sections in the ULCAA could render the language unenforceable because it does not track the statutory language of the PBCA. This is not a concern for cooperatives organized under Article 55 or Article 56 because both Articles use the CBCA as a gap filler. ULCAA, on the other hand, was enacted as a stand-alone statute and there was no intent to use the CBCA as a gap filler.

The ideal solution is an amendment to the PBCA that makes the limiting language inclusive of LCAs. In the interim, it is prudent for LCAs using the PBC form to include the limiting language as it is written in the PBCA and include another provision that clearly expresses the intent of the LCA to apply the ULCAA provisions that are analogous to those CBCA provisions regarding limiting director liability. This statement of intent should be drafted to give parties, a court and other interpreters clear guidance to resolve conflicts of interpretation between the PBCA, ULCAA and the Articles of Organization. As a firm, and a PBC, we are invested in the implementation of this statute and look forward to following and participating in its evolution to meet the needs of the businesses that are utilizing the PBC form.

A strong and supportive community can enable and catapult any entrepreneur to success. This is even more true for social entrepreneurs, those who find solutions to the most pressing social and environmental problems of our time. As an aspiring social entrepreneur, I can attest to the fact that my community became my champions, confidants, partners, teachers, and emotional support, without whom starting a business would have been a whole lot harder.

Jason Wiener | p.c., a mission-driven company, believes in supporting our community by designing legal and business solutions that empower social entrepreneurs to find solutions for the most pressing social and environmental issues of our time. However, to get these innovative businesses off the ground, social entrepreneurs need to navigate a maze of options and regulations – a daunting and sometimes expensive task.

Colorado is one of the most beautiful and exciting states to live in, which is simultaneously experiencing unprecedented, often inequitable and unsustainable growth. We need social entrepreneurs that come up with equitable and empowering solutions for our communities. As a social enterprise, we understand this need and supports social entrepreneurs. We have the expertise, willingness, passion, knowledge, and ability to support social entrepreneurs to form their business, navigate the regulatory environment, and provide business solutions tailored to each venture’s needs. To expand access to this information and high quality legal services, we have launched a pro bono initiative tentatively called the “Community Wealth Building Legal Café” in Denver, which will provide basic legal guidance on the elements of starting up an impactful social enterprise.

During our first legal café, we will discuss one of the first challenges that entrepreneurs face when starting a business: choosing a business entity that truly fits the entrepreneur, as well as the business’s, needs. Figuring this out can be time-consuming, confusing, and often costly. At this legal café, we will give a thirty-minute presentation on the diverse types of legal entities that entrepreneurs can consider, the pros and cons of each, and how to set these up. We will specifically focus on inclusive and engaging business models that have shared ownership at its core. Employee ownership more equitably distributes power and capital by allowing employees to have a purposeful stake in the businesses.

This legal café will be held at Green Spaces, a co-working space in Denver. After the thirty-minute presentation we will open the floor to questions. A team of attorneys from Jason Wiener | p.c. will be there to answer all questions about legal entities, social enterprise, and shared ownership. A free light lunch will also be served. Registration is also free. Register on Eventbrite on or before Tuesday, March 27.

I had the pleasure yesterday of co-presenting with Blue Dot Advocate’s Seth Henry, and B-Lab’s Holly Ensign-Barstow on the Colorado Public Benefit Corporation legal entity form and conversion process. We recorded the webinar and are posting it here for public consumption. We raise important issues that should be discussed with counsel